Bringing our A Game

Man. We've just realized that we were losing some of the momentum we brought to the project in the earliest days of FLOSS IN STYLE. In the beginning we used to be straight soldiers. We'd be working on FLOSS IN STYLE until 4 in the morning almost every single night. I'd have to force myself to go to bed, and to realize this isn't college, and I can't just skip work like I used to skip classes.

Haha, that reminds me of the time in college that Fu and I saw the sun rise for 30 days in a row because we were politickin' every night. It's sad, because you would think we would have a reason right. Like maybe we had mad work to do. But nope. We were just downloading FinKL videos and playing trance music, haha. I'm sure if Bippy is reading this he's rollin'. Remeber that Bips? Haha.

But back to what I was saying. In the beginning of FLOSS IN STYLE, we'd be brainstorming on IM, on the phone, over email, over SMS. I mean it was non stop...we were just always thinking how can we make this site the best it can be.

Now, we think we're slowing down a little bit. I mean don't get me wrong, we're still up all hours of the night. Just ask Fu. The guy is falling asleep on the phone these days because he's going so hardcore. You've gotta be damn tired to fall asleep on the phone...hahaha. And then we have Dirty, the guy is fixing FLOSS IN STYLE bugs during breaks at work. I’m like man, you gotta take it easy. But then I’m not one to talk, because I can't go 10 minutes without checking our traffic statistics, haha. So we're not slacking. But if we were working at 110% before, we've probably slid down to about 95% now.

And that's understandable. With the 2nd site launch this past Monday we have definitely earned a small break. We delivered some awesome features. Everyone is telling us the magnifier and the picture tooltips on the suggested items is off the chain. That's really good to hear, and gives us a great boost of energy.

However, we know that unless we keep bringing more and more goodness, then eventually FLOSS IN STYLE will just be another site with great potential that became a ghost town. That's what we DON'T want to see happen. We don't want to be that site that was tite back in the day. You know, that site where you tell your friend..."Yo remember FLOSS IN STYLE???", and your friend's like, "oh yeah, didn't we used to go to that site back when Clay Aiken was still hot?" Naw man, that won’t be us.

So we realized we have to keep the intensity up. We have to continue to bring our A game to the table. Otherwise, we’ll get lost amongst all the other noise out there.

So now, we're back in the lab and we've started to throw out the ideas again.

We're focused more on marketing than we ever were before. We've realized we have to do something grab attention. You know, we need to do something outlandish. We need some stuff that is going to make people say, "Damn, did you hear what those FLOSS IN STYLE guys did?"

Don’t ask us what we're going to do. We don’t know yet. We have a number of ideas. One of my favorites is throwing a rave in the middle of downtown LA with many scantily clad people during business hours (let us know if you want in). Other not so wise ideas are public nudity wearing nothing but black and red latex paint (If you haven’t already guessed, those are the FLOSS IN STYLE colors). Yeah, for some reason I don't think anyone wants to see the naked rear ends of me, Dirty, or Fu. We'll save the streaking for our over the hill “Old School” style fraternity.

So as you can see we're still far from having a good idea. We could probably use a little help. If you have any good ideas feel free to give us feedback. Here is a link: http://www.flossinstyle.com/FlossUtility/FeedbackForm.aspx

Aight. Well I guess I'm gonna call it quits for the night. It’s time to get back to my other job :).

keep flossin'
iji

Wooooo Hoooooo!!! The launch is here!

Uh what it is yo, uh what's up? Waassssuuuppp! Can a player just FLOSS IN STYLE? IN STYYYYYLLLEEEE! (Haha, you gotta know it to get it.)

Aight!! After a week of delay, Dirty, Fu and I are re-launching this thang. Time to start FLOSSin' again. The next wave of features is live baby. This was a tough four weeks. We put so much effort into cooler features and more content. But it was worth it. We really feel that Wave II is going to help our users FLOSS IN STYLE much, much better (don't you love the colors every time we say FLOSS IN STYLE).

We've doubled the number of pictures. We've added the FLOSS LaunchPad. We've added the image magnifier. We've added tooltip images for suggested items. And we've added so much other stuff that's behind the scenes.

Don't worry, FLOSS IN STYLE is going to get even better.

In the feature list above, I mentioned the suggested item tooltip last but honestly I think this is by far the coolest feature. To try it, put your mouse over one of the suggested items and you should see a picture of the suggested item under your mouse. Now you can see what the items look like instead of just seeing overwhelming plain text.

By the way, one of the reasons for the delay in our launch is that we were having problems with our old site host. We were using GoDaddy before and we encountered tons of database errors. Man, those guys were mad bootleg. Just straight ghetto. We should've known they were bootleg after their superbowl commercial. If you didn't see it you should go look at it (http://www.godaddy.com/gdshop/superbowl05/landing.asp?isc=bpshdr002). That ad there is the definition of bootleg. Anyway, now we've moved to another host, and it's already much better. We'll see how it goes.

So I think it's pretty obvious that our crew is excited about what we've accomplished here. This is another successful Dirty, Iji, Fu collabo.

Again, we have to thank all of you for your feedback. Every time someone gives us advice on how we can improve the site, we're back in the lab working away to bang out new features.

I hope you enjoy the goodness of FLOSS IN STYLE.

keep flossin'
iji

Quality vs. Quantity

So. We reach our first impasse. A question hangs in the air, the answer upon which the future of FLOSS IN STYLE lay.

Well, that's a little bit of an exaggeration. The truth is right now we're having a lively discussion over what you guys, as in our customers, prefer regarding celebrity pictures on the site.

See as we build out the site, we have two options.

Option #1: Slowly and carefully add pictures of celebrities, always being careful to maintain a high quality bar. Meaning only upload high resolution pictures. These pictures are harder to come by, but lead to a "so fresh and so clean, clean" site experience.

Option #2: Quickly add lots of pictures of celebrities to our site even if many of these pictures are smaller and lower resolution. This is fast and easier, but gives the site a more pedestrian (to use a high brow word) feel.

As you can see, it's the age old question of quantity versus quality, and as usual no one knows what the right answer is. So we take the most obvious route available to us....engage in a heated discussion backed by a complete lack of facts and hard evidence.

See here is the thing. We know that you as a customer want both options. You want tons of celebrity pictures, so that you can have a great variety of selection in terms of fashion items that are available. At the same time you also want high quality images, so that as you shop for celebrity fashion you can verify the veracity (wow...he's just bustin' out SAT words today) of an item match.

And now you're thinking, "Hey I was just about to say that. I do want both." The problem is that we can't do both well. We can do an awesome job with picture quality, but then you'll only get like 2 new pictures a day (okay, maybe an exaggeration...but very few). Alternatively, we can lower the quality bar, but give you dozens of pictures across a wide swathe of celebs.

The real question is right now as you shop on our site, what is more frustrating for you? Are you more frustrated by the lack of selection in terms of clothing style, or are you more frustrated by the low resolution of the images, and therefore your inability to validate a suggested item?

This question is key because once we get pictures up on the site it is maaaad painful to take them down and replace them with better pictures. Also, if we go the wrong way we've wasted time...and if there is one thing our team does all share in common, it's a hate for wasted time.

Hmm....anyone have thoughts?

After talking with some peeps, I think the truth is that pictures don't even matter overly much, but suggested items are probably more important. At the end of the day, FLOSS IN STYLE is a shopping site. The celebrity pictures are just meant to provide fashion inspiration. You probably need suggested items more than you need pictures.

Anyway, I won't tell anyone where Fucasso (Fu's new artistically inspired name), Dirty (Frank), and I stand on this matter in an effort to keep the discussion unbiased. But I'll say that we all have our opinions.

Regardless...I'll let you know which way we ended up going. Hopefully, if we've done a good job, you'll be able to figure out what we decided when you look at the site.

Aight, it's 4am, and we're not going to close on this issue tonight. I'm out for today. Maybe sleep will bring the answer.

keep flossin'
iji

April 12th Launch

April 12th is right around the corner and we're excited. That's the day we've targeted to relaunch FLOSS IN STYLE. Awww yeaaahh!

When we took the site down two weeks ago, April 12th seemed like it was forever away. Now it's here and we're rushing to get everything finished.

Two weeks comes and goes way faster than I would've thought. But it's especially tough when you have so many cool features you want to build. With the addition of picture galleries for all of our celebs, the FLOSS LaunchPad, instant outfit notifications, and a number of other great features we've had our work cut out for us.

But hey, we think you guys are going to love it. Oh also, we've started to bring more FLOSSers on board to help us get better content up on the site. You should see the amount of content on FLOSS IN STYLE really start to pick up over the next month.

I think we've learned that you guys want picture of celebrities, and a great selection of fashion to shop for more than you want whizbang features.

Don't worry. We haven't forgotten. Keep checking back frequently to see the goodness we have to share.

keep flossin'
iji

The FLOSS LaunchPad is Tiiiiight

Yoyoyo Flossers. So Dirty (that was Frank's name back in school) and I spent ridiculous hours working on the FLOSS LaunchPad this weekend. This feature is hot!! Check it out. This was another great example of what can come out of a Fu Dirty Iji collaboration.

Here is how it started. We were using our site, and we thought you know what....this site doesn't have as much energy as we want. We want to have a page that's dynamic...that's changing all the time. We want our users to be able to go to a page and in one snapshot see everything that's happening on the site. The FLOSS LaunchPad is the brainchild of this brainstorm.

The main part of the feature is the celebrity list. Basically we show you a list of all the celebs on our site with some interesting tidbits of info. We show you their first picture, how many outfits are on the site for them, the number of items, and the latest item and comment. The last two there are the most interesting. If you're following a single celeb pretty closely, it lets you easily see updates on that celeb.

Second, you have the Statistics. That shows you all the outfits on our site, the number of items, the number of comments, and page views. Now don't ask me why you want this information. We just thought it'd be kind of cool to see. Now you can log on to our site every day and say wow, yesterday they had 22,071 page views, and today they have 23,089!!! Naw, I joke, but it is pretty cool to see how things change daily. I'll definitely be watching that number.

Ok. So we also have the Top FLOSSers. This is kind of cool. So as you know, you can suggest items right. Well with this feature you can see who is suggesting the most items. My cousin Vaughn right now is in the lead spot. He's only 11 but he's posted some really good ones. The little guy really knows the celebs. I'm tempted to hire him to lead our content efforts =).

Random Outfit. I talk too much. I'll let you figure that one out for yourself. I'm making you try it. Hope you like.

Now about Most Active Outfits. This is cool. It basically shows you which outfits have had the most user behavior on them. We count comments, suggested items, and a bunch of other stuff to come up with a score. Basically, we give you a quick way to see what outfits have the most action. We think it's pretty tight. Time will tell how much everyone else likes it. Let us know if you think it's hot or not.

So anyway. There is a lot to this feature, and we think it's very cool. We're going to play with it and we ask you guys to play with it. If it's great then tell us, and feel free to tell the rest of the world too ;). If you have some not so positive feedback such as "hey guys, what were you smoking when you built this thing...." then let us know that too.

Aight. It's 2am, and I have to be to work early tomorrow. Daylight savings isn't helping the FLOSS IN STYLE cause at all. I'm out.

keep flossin'
iji

Fashion Ninjas

Hahaha. Man, so we just coined an awesome term...the Fashion Ninja. I don't know if other people have already said this, but I thought it was hilarious.

What is a Fashion Ninja? Well according to us at FLOSS IN STYLE it's a person that is just ridiculously good at finding fashion on the web. Someone that can see a picture and within minutes find you the article of clothing you're looking for.

I wonder how many of our users are Fashion Ninjas. I'm sure a lot of our top posters are. You know what, one day we might need to hold a Fashion Ninja tournament. It could be a cool head to head tournament to see who really is the best on the web at finding online fashion.

What would it be called? "Clicks of Fury" maybe?

keep flossin'
iji